Scripts and update!

Hi, everyone! Summer is over, and the spooky season is upon us. I'm toying around with ideas for a Halloween episode, and I should have more on that soon. The big project on The West Wing has been outlined and is still on track for release early next year. You may have noticed a string of weekly videos lately. I'm trying to get back to a more normal schedule. However, sometimes that just isn't possible when the video is a big one. 

Thank you for your continued support. I have some scripts for you. Both are longer than the actual episodes. I cut some material for the video. So, you get to see more than anyone else.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

AUDIO 1

How did it come to this? Where do we go from here? Who were the terrorists, right-wing militias, hate groups, crypto-fascists and unfathomably ignorant cosplay losers who stormed the United States Capitol and got off with a stern warning from the police? And why did they even do this? [I. False Reality] To answer the “why” of all this, we need to understand the false reality that President Donald Trump has created for a large portion of the United States – an alternate version of events that have no basis in fact but are nonetheless more believable to those who accept it. This false reality reinforces a pre-existing worldview and is therefore more appealing than the facts. If facts present themselves that contradict the worldview, they can be discarded, and if “alternate facts” with no basis in reality present themselves that reinforce the worldview, they can be swallowed whole regardless of their illegitimacy. That worldview includes right-wing nationalism, and for some, ultra-nationalism. [“I'm a nationalist.”] Nationalism as public policy is the prioritization of the nation over the world or foreign interests, which is not unusual, but nationalism as a movement and as culture is different. Trump's supporters are not nationalists in the sense that they are policy wonks with complex thoughts about the United States' relationships with its allies. They are nationalists in the sense that they believe in the uniqueness and special status of themselves as Americans.

And that their conception of what it means to be “an American” is not simply residency in the United States but adherence to socially conservative values that they believe define the United States. Deviation from these values are “un-American” and present those deviating as part of an out-group that exists outside the protection of the in-group. Not only separate groups but a hierarchy of groups, divisions often based on political affiliation, race, religion and other factors. Donald Trump stoked this pre-existing nationalism by using fanciful, largely false imagery about a mythic past in the history of the United States in which the nation was “great,” assigning this period never by an exactdate but suggesting it was from before the end of the segregation based on some of his statements about the police and protesters. A movement based on far-right ultra-nationalism that is reliant on a mythic past to justify a cultural hierarchy is called a “fascist” movement.

AUDIO 2

One tactic of fascists is to define fascism as something else, purposefully confusing the opposition and enablers so that their movement can continue unabated. Fascism is an ideology and a movement, but not a form of government, in the same way that conservatism is an ideology and a movement but not a form of government. For a more thorough explanation of fascism, please see the video “MAGA and Fascism” in the description, in which I warned that we needed to start taking this seriously – or else. Fascism is so inherently duplicitous due to its reliance on a mythic past and scapegoat enemies that it requires the maintenance of the aforementioned false reality. Trump's false reality operates like this: anything positive said about Trump is “truth-telling” and anything negative said about Trump is “fake news.” Because of Trump's close relationship with conservative media figures, the term “fake news” propagated and was falsely legitimized by pundits for their political and economic interests. Responding to criticism by claiming “fake news” is a strategy of non-engagement, dismissing lies and misdeeds by claiming that they never happened. Trump's supporters don't have to interrogate thousands upon thousands of lies, because they only have to believe one lie – the big lie – the one that tells them that everything negative said about Trump is false, that criticism of Trump is not legitimate but the result of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

That concern about the rising tide of fascism in the United States is simply people saying “Orange Man Bad” instead of what it really is: genuine concern about provable events.Belief in the big lie might seem absurd to an outsider, and it is, but it's all part of accepting false data that reinforces a worldview and dismissing data that contradicts that worldview. The most pervasive and most relevant aspect of the false reality in early 2021 is that mistaken belief that Trump actually won the 2020 election and that Joe Biden and the Democratic Party have subverted the will of the American people, somehow changing millions of votes. It's a half-baked conspiracy theory that appears more at home in a fishwrap, alien abduction supermarket newspaper than it does in the mainstream discourse. The “evidence” of this fraud is nearly non-existent, reliant on anonymous figures with nothing tangible but a platform in conservative media. Trump claimed that looking at his crowds, he should have won Biden did not draw crowds. This argument played well with supporters who regularly attended his crowds in a “seeing is believing” sense. However, crowd size does not equal voter turnout, and Biden opted not to have many rallies for obvious health concerns during the pandemic. It was dangerously irresponsible of Trump to hold his rallies. Trump said that the Dominion machines regularly turned out false results, which has been debunked, and a variety of other hair-brained theories that originated predominantly on social media.

AUDIO 3

In addition to there being no hard evidence, there is another factor that makes this conspiracy preposterous. Conspiracy theorists believe that the worst things in the world are happening in secret cabals that are both incredibly powerful and pervasive while simultaneously impossible to expose. Literally hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people would have had to have been involved on the state and federal levels, and all of them would have had to have destroyed any evidence and not gone public with it. The possibility of this even being hypothetically pulled off is astronomically low. Experts and mathematicians have conclusively shown that the more people know about a conspiracy, the shorter the amount of time it would take for it to be exposed. For example, since approximately 410,000 people would have had to have been involved in faking a moon landing, it would have taken only as little as three months before it would have been exposed. That is because everyone at NASA and many others in the federal government would have had to have been involved. Arguably, an election fraud on the federal level and state level on all fifty states would have had to have involved significantly more people. If it had been attempted on the scale that Trump himself has claimed, it would have been uncovered in November. Thus, in addition to there being no hard evidence, there is also simple common sense.

In reality, the worst things in the world, the manner in which the state oppresses people, is done out in the open and does not require a secret cabal and an impossible conspiracy theory. The oppressive relationship between rich nations and poor nations, poverty that enriches the few, control of the poor through the police, human-made climate change endorsed by business interests and the state's allowance of it – all these things happen without a cabal. The state does all this on its own and does not require a secondary “deep state” to accomplish it. Why these things happen and whether or not they should happen are matters of ideological political debate, but whether or not they do happen at all is not. For example, the energy corporations tried to hide their role in climate change since the 1970's, but clime scientists and whistle-blowers have been warning us about this for about as long. The choice by the state to do little about this was done out in the open through public policy – not secret policy – and justified as protecting business interests. Conspiracies happen, but widespread conspiracies are exposed dependent on how many people know. Propaganda white-washes these worst things as somehow necessary and lionizes those performing these worst things, but these worst things are still undeniably happening because they are happening out in the open and are provable through observation. With this in mind, it is undeniable that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election – and this reality is not dependent on our preference.

AUDIO 4

Whether or not it is a good thing or not is a matter of ideological political debate. Whether or not it happenedis not. Nevertheless, due to the pre-constructed false reality, centuries of Americans being told that the president is a trustworthy authority, and a right-wing media apparatus that saw ratings, an uncomfortably large portion of the population have accepted this obvious nonsense and transparent power-grab. To believe otherwise would mean deconstructing their false reality that has given them so much comfort. To them, believing that Joe Biden simply won the election has greater consequences than merely accepting a Democrat will be president. Democrats have certainly been president before. Believing Joe Biden won the election not only means believing Trump lost but also believing that Trump is lying to them about the fraud. After years of living in the false reality, coming to terms with everything that knew to be a lie is too traumatic to consider. With this trauma staring them in the face, Trump's supporters have retreated further into their false reality, and the further inside they go, the more convinced they are that Trump is right, and the more convinced they are that Trump is right, the more they feel justified taking any action that supports Trump – because supporting Trump means fighting back against the coming trauma of realizing that their entire worldview, everything they believed in, was wrong. [II. January 6th]

On December 19th, after weeks of falsely claiming that he had won the election, Donald Trump declared that there must be a “wild protest” in Washington DC to stop the certification of Joe Biden. His supporters began calling the event just that. The attendance of the rally and the insurrection of the Capitol was organized predominantly through alternative social media platforms like Parler and Telegram as well as message boards like 4chan and 8kun. After years of allowing hate groups to populate facebook, the tech giant finally began cracking down recently, and after years of giving Trump a platform, Twitter finally began warning its users that the President of the United States had been consistently lying to them for years. On the night before the “Save America” rally in Washington DC, activists protested outside the home of Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri. Hawley was one of the loudest Republican supporters of the erroneous “fraud” allegation. Hawley took to the media, claiming that those gathered were “antifa” and that they were threatening his family. However, the entire protest was recorded, and Hawley's claims were disproved. Republicans often use “antifa” as their boogeyman and exaggerate what anti-fascist counter-protesting actually is. Remember that for later. On the morning of January 6th, thousands of Trump supporters flooded Washington, DC, many of them there to protest and to see Donald Trump speak, many there with a plan to storm the Capitol, but all with the goal of stopping Joe Biden from being certified as the next president.

AUDIO 5

A variety of far right groups attended the Save America rally. The Proud Boys, a neo-fascist, men-only collection of modern day brownshirts and Donald Trump's unofficial armed militia. In the days prior, their leader had been arrested for participating in the vandalization of a church as well as weapons charges, and the Proud Boys were obviously riled up about that. Also attending were the Three-Percenters, a far right militia, Nationalist Social Club, an explicitly Neo-Nazi organization, specifically NSC-131, QAnon conspiracy theorists, and quite frankly, a number of police officers. Not undercover police officers hoping to quell a riot but simply law enforcement in support of Donald Trump and the storming of the Capitol. This was confirmed by Politico. It is important not to underestimate the danger this posed, not only because of which groups were there, but because a great number of those attending were armed. On the morning on January 6th, Donald Trump gave a speech in which he said that he would never concede, repeating his lie that the election was fraudulent, and that his supporters should march to the United States Capitol where they were about to certify the electoral college votes. Republican Congressman Mo Brooks spoke at the rally, stating “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass."Republican Congressman Madison Hawthorn also spoke at the rally, declaring “This crowd has some fight.”

Once again, bear in mind that Trump and his cronies were telling all of this to avowed fascists, Neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists, and militias. Rudy Giuliani slithered on to the stage and told the crowd that this must be decided by a “trial by combat.” And that is what happened. After years of fomenting hatred, beginning his campaign by calling Mexicans “rapists,” then double-downing on it in the media, calling the white supremacist marchers “very fine people,” siding with fascist groups like the Proud Boys, and creating a false reality around himself, Trump sparked a violent insurrection into the United States Capitol. Five people are dead. It could have been a lot worse. In addition to many of the insurrectionists being armed, eleven homemade bombs were found in a truck parked near the Capitol, and at least two pipe bombs were found on the scene and removed before they could explode. Some insurrectionists brought zip ties in order to take hostages. The latest reporting is that many insurrectionists were there to capture or kill Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Mike Pence. The only reason no Congressmen or Senators were killed or taken hostage is because many buildings on Capitol Hill have underground evacuation tunnels that connect to one another. This was not a protest, this was not simply trespassing, and it was not even “merely” a riot. Civil disobedience is not always bad if the intentions and goals are just. This was not civil disobedience. This was an active, violent attempt to force the loser of an election to remain in power through terrorism. According to reports, Trump's administration initially refused to send in the National Guard to retake the Capitol.

AUDIO 6

This is still a developing story at the time of writing, but signs points to Vice President Pence eventually making that call, regardless of his authority to do so. Let's be perfectly clear. If these insurrectionists were not white, they may have been slaughtered. If these insurrectionists were not white, there would have been greater security, as there was at the Lincoln Memorial in preparation for a Black Lives Matter protest not long ago. The application of the police against people of color is consistently different than the application of the police against white people in the United States, and if anyone has ever thought otherwise, remember January 6th, 2021. Once the dust settled, the insurrectionists took selfies with police officers and nearly all of them were gently escorted outside of the Capitol. Trump made a short video shortly after the incident that he inspired, praising the violent insurrectionists, saying “We love you. You're very special.” This was said by the President of the United States about domestic terrorists. Trump suggested his supporters may as well go home, a passing comment in an address that still praised terrorism. The video finally broke Twitter, as they took the unprecedented action of removing it. Too little, too late, Jack. Ivanka Trump called them “American Patriots” – a statement she later deleted after the backlash. Later in the day, the House and Senate reconvened to certify Joe Biden as the next president. Many Republican Congressmen and Senators continued spreading their lie about the election, even though this lie was what caused armed insurrectionists to storm their building and threaten to cause harm (or death) to their colleagues.

A few Republicans who had been beating this particular drum backed down under the circumstances, but many did not. Senator Hawley, caught in a lie less than 24 hours ago, crawled out from under his desk and continued his erroneous accusations. Ted Cruz trumpeted his nonsense for all to hear. Praising Mitt Romney is physically hard for me to do, but in fairness, he did make one good point while standing against his Republican colleagues. Another recount, audit, or investigation would be pointless because there is no amount of evidence that will ever convince people who believe in Donald Trump. The certification went long into the night until it finally concluded. During this time, a curfew was in effect in Washington, DC. Many Proud Boys, Three-Percenters and other assorted right-wing losers continued to wreak havoc across the city. Some in the media are hung up on whether or not to call what happened on January 6than attempted “coup” and whether or not to call them “terrorists.” Whether one considers the events of January 6tha violent coup by domestic terrorists, attended by provable white supremacists and fascists, designed to interrupt or change the lawful democratic process or a violent insurrection by far-right militias, attended by provable white supremacists and fascists, designed to interrupt or change the lawful democratic process is not particularly salient. Everything else in the description is still accurate no matter how charitably one views the events of that day. [III. What Now?]

AUDIO 7

Conservative media and Trump's supporters who were not present engaged in a cognitive dissonance, declaring the people who violently stormed the United States Capitol were brave patriots, andthat this was only instigated by leftist agitators. The right says “It was good thing that we did, and if it was bad, then it wasn't us anymore.” Imagine thinking some imaginary “outside agitator” has more influence over the supporters of Donald Trump than Donald Trump himself. As if Donald Trump was not calling for this, as if Donald Trump just happened to be the name on all their flags. This was briefly circulated by an erroneous article in the Washington Times about facial recognition software that was quickly debunked by the corporation that makes the software. The Washington Times has since taken down its article. No apologies from Fox News on spreading this disinformation are expected.The insurrectionists were not revolutionaries or anarchists – they were not raging against the machine. They were raging in favor of the machine. It would be very helpful if the media could study what the word “anarchism” actually means. The insurrectionists were nottrying to dismantle the state and create a society without unjust hierarchies – they were trying to keep a fascist president in power.

Let's be clear: the ludicrous notion that protesting injustice and protesting justice are the same, that the radical left and the radical right have similar goals, that being anti-fascist is the same as being fascist, and that the fascists are not fascists is something that right-wing media and politicians pretendto believe but knowis not true. Pretending to believe this and telling others is propaganda that assists in their political goals. Fascists and their enablers prefer to downplay fascist activities like the events of January 6th, often by citing the failure of the fascists. If the fascists failed to accomplish their goal, then their attempt is hand-waved away. This is designed to provide cover for fascism in the present as well as allow further attempts in the future – until they win. In response to the coup, several White House officials resigned in protest, including Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, former chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, National Security Council member Ryan Tully, and First Lady's Chief of Staff, Stephanie Grisham. One wonders where that courage was during any of the thousand other times Trump went over the line. A full day and a half after he incited a coup against the United States Capitol, Trump released a short video disavowing any responsibility, undoubtedly in hopes of protecting himself from another impeachment, invocation of the 25thamendment, losing his precious social media accounts that he requires for his rumored 2024 run, and looming legal trouble following his one term in office.

AUDIO 8

Trump has announced that he does not plan to attend the Inauguration Day celebration, leading to speculation that he may be planning to be out of the country as he becomes an ex-president. In the speech, Trump played off his consistent, unambiguous accusation of fraud as “just asking questions” – the same way he played off birtherism once conclusively proven wrong – but years of riling up his violent base and months of accusations of fraud tell a different story. His address the previous day explicitly stated that he still believed he won by a “landslide.” He was not “just asking questions.” His attempt at rehabilitating his image was transparent and insulting to the intelligence of anyone who was actually paying attention. Some in the media tried to do what they have been doing for years, saying that Trump had finally “pivoted” and “displayed a new tone” and that this was the day he truly became president. They said this so many times over the course of four years and they always turned out to be wrong a day later. Indeed, the same day that he displayed this “new tone,” it was widely reported that Trump had asked his aides about pardoning himself in the coming days, and the next day, he tweeted his awful, embarrassing rhetoric in his standard “tone.” Some people are so desperate for normalcy that they will pretend something is normal, as if putting it out into the universe will make it manifest, but all it does it normalize something that is not normal, providing further cover for the absolute worst of our society.

So, what lessons have we learned from this tragedy, and what do we do now? Well, one lesson is that if people carefully explain day after day, year after year, the dangers of a growing fascist movement in the United States by citing historical example after historical and how these examples parallel what is happening today, maybe take them seriously next time. Because the uncomfortable truth is that there will be a next time. This is not over when Trump leaves office. The false reality cannot be so easily deconstructed. Fascism will outlive Trump, which means we have to outmaneuverfascism. A lot of satisfied people with nothing to lose tell counter-protesters to stay home because it will only embolden the fascists, but if you ask any counter-protest organizer, that is quite literally the opposite effect. When fascist groups organize and announce a rally, counter-protesters announce themselves as the opposition, and generally speaking, one out of two things happen: either the fascists chicken out and cancel the rally altogether or the rally goes ahead but with far fewer fascists than expected. The opposition – the counter-protest – ends up outnumbering the fascists, and they are demoralized and defeated. Fascism is a cult of strength, and looking weak is their only sin. When Richard Spencer got punched only once, it ruined his image with other fascists, and when counter-protesters began to outnumber his people at rallies, he soon disappeared until he tried and failed to rebrand himself as a Biden supporter – something laughed at and rejected by the right, the left, and Biden himself.

AUDIO 9

When fascist organizer Jason Kessler planned Unite the Right II in Washington, DC a few years back, the counter-protest was so enormous that almost nobody on the fascist side even showed up, and they were surrounded by an entire city. Kessler has barely been seen since and reportedly moved back in with his parents. Counter-protests also provide opportunities to photograph fascists to expose them, something that rightfully terrifies them and has them fear for their jobs. The events of January 6thgot so out of control because there was so little counter-protest. Some organizers, understandably concerned for their health with so many violent militia groups occupying the city, limited their counter-protest. Without a counter-protest to keep fascists in line, they will do whatever they want. The police are not going to do enough to stop them. Sometimes they are police are part of them. There were some cops who actively held the line, and some who let them roam free. We can't bet on the police being on our side. When you tell anti-fascist counter-protesters to stay home and just ignore the fascists, this is the result. Without an active resistance and a presence that makes fascists feel unwelcome and unsafe, this is how far they will go – or further. If there was ever any doubt, the proof is what happened inside the Capitol. If there had been a counter-protest of equal or greater size, the fascists would not have made it that far, and at least five people would still be alive. Information on legal direct action against fascism is in the description. When Trump is out of office, the Three-Percenters and NSC are not done.

They existed before this administration. When Trump is out of office, even his Trump-specific hate groups and conspiracy theorists are not going to suddenly have their hearts grow three sizes. In fact, a poll of Democratic, Republican and independent voters conducted shortly after the insurrection found that 45% of Republicans approve of the violent takeover of the Capitol, and only 43% disapproved of it. Other polls have more encouraging numbers with fewer Republicans approving of the insurrection, but the approval rating is still a not insignificant amount of Republicans. The events of January 6thcannot be hand-waved as an isolated incident and the work of a fringe group if so many Republicans agree with it. Defending the insurrectionists by saying that most were not Proud Boys, and that not everyone was there to murder people, and that many were only “regular” Republicans fails to address two things. First, the moment they breached the Capitol in an attempt to stop certification of a fair election, they were just as complicit and just as vile as any Proud Boy. Second, the fact that this action has been widely endorsed by Republican voters suggests that “regular” Republican ideology is now this ideology. The false reality is stronger than ever. There is already another armed march on the Capitol being planned for later this month. Fascism historically is not stopped through a vote. It will require us to step up and to stop thinking that this is over or that we will be saved by Joe Biden. This movement will not end on January 20th. In fact, that day in Washington DC could be another flashpoint.

DEMOCRATS ARE NOT THE RADICAL LEFT

AUDIO 1

[McConnell] “Like many Americans, I've spent this past several, past several weeks watching with interest as prominent leaders in the Democratic Party have engaged in a political foot race. They're sprinting, literally sprinting, to the far left as possible, as quickly as possible, trying to outdo one another. The result is that one of our two major political parties have begun embracing radical, half-baked, socialist proposal after another.” This is Mitch McConnell – for the moment, the Senate Majority Leader and chief ghoul of the Republican Party. You may notice something strange about what he is saying, that the opposition, the Democratic Party, is “radical” and “far left” and “socialist.” [Trump] This is not a practice unique to Mitch McConnell, though. President Donald Trump uses the same language when referring to Democratic politicians. [“Let it simmer for a while. Let people see what radical left Democrats will do to our country.”] [brainwashed cultists cheering] This similar language, words like “extreme” and “radical” to describe Democratic politicians, is not a coincidence, as it was and still is a planned talking point within conservative political circles and conservative news media. [“We begin the vetting, all this week and next, of the extreme 2020 Democratic candidates, as we examine the radical views tonight of Kamala Harris, the Senator from California.”] It's also the subject of many political attack ads against Democratic politicians. [“The radical left has taken over the Democratic Party, and Joe Biden is in lockstep with them.”]

Notice how these pundits and attack ads paint politicians like Bernie Sanders with the same brush as establishment Democrats like Joe Biden. The goal is two-fold: to make the Democratic Party in general seem too “radical” for moderate voters no matter which Democrat is on the ballot and to make Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seem about as far to the left on the political spectrum as possible. This has lead to bizarre takes in conservative media and the right-wing end of social media, suggesting that once the Democrats control more of the government, far left policies are right around the corner. Republicans are always threatening us with a good time. The truth is, when Democrats have had majority control over the federal government in the past, they have enacted incremental reforms, at best, and have continued Republican domestic and foreign policy, at worst. Propaganda that instead paints the Democratic Party as radical has been successful for the Republican Party, as recent polling shows that nearly half of all Americans believe that the Democratic Party has moved too far to the left, an opinion that is incongruous with reality. The facts surrounding these duplicitous goals tell a different story. The Democratic Party is a fairly centrist political party – relative to further left political ideologies and further left political parties internationally – and politicians like Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, and others are not far left radicals but social democrats.

AUDIO 2

Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist, not a social democrat, but they are actually different, and Sanders' policy proposals are more in line with the latter, not the former. Also, he only registers as a Democrat when he is running for president and is more commonly registered as an independent. In other words, even on the fringes of the Democratic Party, they are not socialists, not radical, and by and large, not really “the left.” The Democratic Party's political ideology is liberalism – not socialism. A lifetime of propaganda might leave the average American with the mistaken impression that these two ideologies are one in the same or at least similar, but they are actually opposed to one another in key ways. To understand this, we need to understand the history of liberalism, how it has been adopted and implemented by the Democratic Party in modern American history, and how it has shaped the party's acceptance of and adherence to neoliberal capitalism. [I. What Is Liberalism Anyway?] During the Enlightenment in the 17th century, there was a great upheaval of new ideas in Europe. A King had been executed in England, the German states were interested in political reform, and a plucky new economic system was making the rich richer. Instilling greater and greater power among the wealthy seemed in contradiction to the more high-minded enlightenment ideals – but not to everyone.

Classical liberal philosopher John Locke saw no such contradiction and concluded that private property, a key feature of capitalism, was connected to freedom and equality. In his Second Treatise on Government, Locke summarized the emerging philosophy of liberalism this way: “Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”Note these important words – “liberty” and “equal” – as freedom and equality are said to be the defining characteristics of liberalism. Then there is the other – possessions, or property – and in the time of this writing, that included private property. Private property is not the same as personal property. Personal property is one's own belongings that can realistically be used by one person. Private property is something that one person cannot realistically use by oneself and is needed by the community – like a factory. The owner of the private property hires others to do the work instead. Under capitalism, a single person can own something that the entire community needs, no matter how much that might damage the community or keep the community poor and reliant on the owner. Belief in the sanctity of this private property seems to contradict the other two defining characteristics of liberalism. For example, how much “freedom” exists under capitalism? Liberalism posits that capitalism allows individuals to have the freedom to make choices – what clothes to wear, what food to buy, where to live, et cetera.

AUDIO 3

Yet, “freedom” is a tricky concept because it contains multitudes of contradictions. Does capitalism create “freedom”? Certainly those with means are more “free” to act as they want the more wealth they acquire, but since capitalism establishes a hierarchy, those at the bottom of said hierarchy are certainly less free than those at the top. Liberal philosophers posit that in order for there to be freedom, people must be “free” to exploit others. They just don't phrase it that way. Instead, they say that the values of equality, freedom and property still produce the most freedom possible and that capitalism still offers them tremendous freedom. However, this declaration of most freedom is suspicious. The workers may have the “freedom” to apply for a job and sell their labor to a capitalist, but if the workers don't do this, they will die. It's no choice at all. It's mandatory. Capitalism posits that workers freely enter into a contract to sell their labor, but the workers have far less negotiating power than the capitalist and must therefore work under the wage set by the capitalist, not themselves. Freedom, much like wealth, does not trickle down. To put it a simpler way, if person A gives person B the option of being harmed by a blunt instrument or a sharp instrument, person B does have the freedom to choose between the two options that person A has given them, but person B does not have the freedom to choose not to be harmed at all. Under capitalism, we only have the freedom to choose between the options that capitalists allow.

And what about equality, the other important characteristic of liberalism? Capitalism is hierarchical by design, thereby creating inequality, not equality. The history of capitalism is a history of the wealthy gaining more and more, a deepening gap between wages, a coercive economic relationship between rich nations and poor nations, an existential, environmental catastrophe, and the monopoly of various industries. Five corporations dominate food production, four corporations dominate internet service, two corporations dominate retail, and one corporation dominates online retail. Jeff Bezos, the world's richest businessman, makes more money per second than the average US worker makes in a week. That's not equality. Today, approximately 4.3 billion people – which is more than 60% of the world’s population – live in poverty, struggling to survive on less than the equivalent of $5 per day. That's not equality. Freedom and equality – two of the defining characteristics of liberalism – are hindered by the other defining quality – capitalism. In fact, one could argue that capitalism not only contradicts and hinders the other two characteristics of liberalism but is given priority over them, because capitalism is allowed to hinder freedom and equality, but freedom and equality are not allowed to hinder capitalism. This is called neoliberalism – a philosophy and system that prioritizes capitalism under the belief, or perhaps, pretense that it serves the public good.

AUDIO 4

In the book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, David Harvey defined it more thoroughly: “Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices.” Neoliberalismmay be a confusing term because it was popularized in the eras of conservative leaders like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, but neoliberalism is a system maintained by both conservatives and liberals. The two ideologies have different ideas about what is the aforementioned social well-being, but they both agree that the free market is the method in which to achieve their goals and that state's purpose is to facilitate the market. In summary, as the philosophy of liberalism developed, its adherence to private property, socio-economic hierarchy, and a powerful state to enforce all this proved inadequate to those who recognized the aforementioned contradiction. Any concepts that opposed capitalism and the state were flushed out of liberalism, and over time, the centrists who favored capitalism displaced the progressives who wanted to push the concept of liberty further left.

In the United States, the left was not only pushed out of the conversation but eventually demonized during the Cold War. The US affirmed only two political ideologies represented by two political parties: liberalism and conservatism. In other words, the center and the right, respectively, with no real room for the left. [II. What Is the Democratic Party Anyway?] Republicans love bringing up the fact that the Democratic Party was once the conservative party of the United States, which is the most stunning and consistent self-own in American political discourse. Republicans can't broach the subject without the implication that the former, abandoned ideology of the Democratic Party is now the ideology of the Republicans' own party today. It's an argument that more closely resembles seeing political parties as sports teams with dynasties and important championship victories instead of seeing political parties as entities with ideologies and agendas. It reveals a lot about whoever is delivering this bad argument more than it reveals about the Democratic Party. The change from conservatism to liberalism within the Democratic Party happened in waves, arguably beginning with public outcry about economic disparity and the (at the time) three political parties using the opportunity to side with voters' concerns: the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and the Progressive Party.

AUDIO 5

Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, was elected president on the promise of economic reforms. Then, during the Great Depression, the Democratic Party became the party of relief against economic hardship. This was cemented later with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal. Finally, with southern segregationist Democrats abandoning their party for the Republican Party, the long journey toward liberalism in the Democratic Party was complete. The Democratic Party's ideology has been firmly established as liberalism, the centrist position that advocates for equality and justice but only as far as capitalism will allow. Nevertheless, Republican politicians frequently paint the Democratic Party as “socialist” or “the left” and their base parrots this ignorance. Well, what is the left? Apologies for those who have already read theory, but not everyone watches a video having already completed Das Kapital. It's, well, very long, and pretty dry. To summarize, socialism is a political philosophy that posits that the means of production, distribution and exchange ought to be collectively owned, not privately owned. How this is accomplished depends on which form of socialism one subscribes to, but even without diving further into theory, we can already see that this is in direct opposition to liberalism because it opposes the aforementioned private ownership. Communism or a “communist society” is stateless, moneyless and classless. Communism is the eventual goal of some socialists, though not all socialists have the same goals.

Anarchists also believe in a society in which what we currently consider the state is abolished. Because of this, many anarchists also consider themselves communists or anarcho-communists. Nations like China and others have political parties called “communist” in name and in aesthetic but do not have communist societies, meaning stateless, moneyless and classless. A party of communism and even an ideology of communism do not equal a society that is functionally communist. Social democracy, as seen in Scandinavian countries, is not actually socialism. Social democracy maintains private ownership of most of the means of production but provides a social safety net. Social democracy borrows ideas from socialism and has historical connections to socialist movements, but social democracy is more like a mild compromise between socialism and capitalism that is still, essentially, capitalist. That's not to say that social democrats should never call themselves socialists – I am not the Socialism Decider – this is just some basic theory and categorization. Whether or not social democracy is part of “the left” alongside socialism is a matter of some debate, but that is not relevant to this exercise. In this exercise, it is only relevant that even social democracy is to the left of the Democratic Party establishment and its ideology. It is true that words like “socialism” and “communism” can be used differently depending on the context and that these words mean somewhat different things to different political theorists.

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And that's fine, this is actually far more complicated anyway, but the relevant matter for this exercise is that socialism and communism are not liberalism because socialism and communism oppose capitalism whereas liberalism embraces capitalism. If you are an American and self-identify as a liberal, and you are saying “Well, I'm a liberal, and I don't like capitalism,” then congratulations, you're not a liberal. You're a leftist. You have simply been lead to believe that liberalism is just anything to the left of conservatism – the result of propaganda that obscures the political compass. Put a pin in that, more in a moment. Long story short, there is a lot to the political left of liberalism, which is why liberalism is considered a centrist political position and why the Democratic Party, whose ideology is liberalism, is a centrist party. This is well-understood in other parts of the world. In Canada, the Liberal Party is the centrist party. To its left is the New Democratic Party, which espouses an ideology of social democracy, and to the right, the Conservative Party, which obviously espouses an ideology of conservatism. In the United Kingdom, the Liberal Democrats is the centrist party between Labor and Conservative. In Australia, the Liberal Party is basically center-right and has a coalition with the even more right-leaning National Party. Together, they oppose the Australian Labor Party, which is to their left. Nobody mistakes “liberalism” for “the left” in these nations.

In the United States, however, Republicans spread a false conception of “socialism” to their base that amounts to “anything that is not laissez faire capitalism” – meaning capitalism that is completely devoid of economic interventionism. Economic intervention is everything from environmental regulations to protect the planet from climate change to the federal minimum wage. Republicans make American voters think socialism is “when the government does stuff,” and since the Democratic Party favors some common sense safety regulations, some workers' rights regulations, and some form of minimum wage, they can paint these fairly centrist policy proposals as “socialism” – even though that is not what the word means and that is not where that ideology lands on the political compass. Imagine genuinely thinking Nancy Pelosi believes that the means of production ought to be collectively owned by the workers or the community. It's such an audacious lie. [“We're capitalists.”]

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Republicans have even tried tying anarchism to the Democratic Party lately. Imagine genuinely thinking Joe Biden is about to march down the street and call for the abolition of the state, the police, and the carceral system. Biden, who believes we should fund the police even more and had a hand in greatly expanding the prison population in the 1990's. These unbelievable scenarios are actually what the Republican Party wants the public to believe about the Democratic Party. Now, how does their rhetoric pull off this illusion? What shape does this illusion take? This is the political compass. It is imperfect and too simplistic, but it is also the most well-known political spectrum graph and the one that will be used for this exercise. Most other attempts at making a better political compass have had confusing or abysmal results. The Democratic Party's ideology is liberalism, which sets it somewhere around the center. Social democracy as an ideology is slightly to its left, socialism further, and so on. The Republican Party's ideology is conservatism, which sets it to the right of the Democrats. This is an art as much as a science, and the exact placement on each axis is unimportant for the purposes of this exercise.Whether one considers the distance between the Republicans and Democrats to be more narrow or to be wider or for the Republicans to be closer to this quadrant and Democrats closer to this quadrant is also unimportant for the purposes of this exercise.

All that matters is that the Republicans are to the Democrats' right and that socialism is a good distance to the left of the Democratic Party. If we listen to enough Republican propaganda about the Democrats, we begin to see commonalities, and if we see commonalities, we begin to interrogate the goals of this propaganda. It appears to have two separate but related goals. First, it ignores what socialism actually is, removing the goals of socialism. That way, the population will not investigate leftist ideologies in the green quadrant. Second, it tells the population that the Democrats' policies are “socialist” and since “socialism” is supposed to be far left, the population believes that the Democrats' policies are about as far left as possible. This rearranges the compass to make the public perception of the political spectrum look more like this: one quadrant. As you can see, the Democrats' position and the Republicans' position have not actually moved, but the other quadrants have been obscured or erased. Now the Democratic Party appears as if it is to the far left, and the Republican Party, which is actually pretty right-wing, appears like a moderate, centrist party. The “common sense” party for American families trying to put food on the table. The Democratic Party is put in the unenviable position of trying to counter this propaganda by denying that it's a socialist party while trying to not explicitly state what socialism actually is, because if they explain socialism honestly to the general population of the United States of America, then it might become popular. And they don't want that. [“We're capitalists.”]

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The Democratic Party also does not want to explain socialism honestly because then Republicans will say “Look, they're spreading socialist propaganda!” thus defeating the whole point of the Democrats' defense against this accusation. For these reasons, the Democratic Party does not want to talk about socialism or even social democracy. Thus, the misconception that the Democratic Party is part of the left is maintained through propaganda by the Republican Party andan unwillingness to engage with socialism by the Democratic Party. So, with all this in mind, why is the Democratic Party so resistant to moving to the left, and is there any hope whatsoever in moving them to the left ourselves? [III. The Present and the Future] Maintaining capitalism is the political goal of a class of people whose policies eventually benefit themselves most from that goal. Politicians go on to make big money as politicians, which discourages them from doing anything that gives less power to capitalists. This has the immediate benefit to themselves as capitalists, and it maintains a relationship with wealthy capitalist donors who keep them in power. It's a neverending cycle. Now, it's more complicated than that and involves a lot of alternate methods in which politicians make money like speaking engagements, books, designing the laws that bolster their side businesses, using classified political knowledge to make better informed business decisions, and so forth.

The long and short of it is that the maintenance of capitalism is in the best interests of wealthy politicians. The Republican Party is mostly worse in this regard, but neither party is actually advocating for actualsocialism that delivers real power into the hands of the workers instead of the capitalists. The rich and powerful are not incentivized to give up their position in the socio-economic hierarchy. On the rare occasion that major figures appear within the Democratic Party or caucus with the Democratic Party advocating for significant change towards at least social democracy, roadblocks are set up to slow their progress and limit their influence. These roadblocks come from directly within the party and indirectly through news media that also has an economic interest in the capitalist status quo. People go to cable news for their current events, for their roundtable discussions, for their punditry, all hoping to stay informed, and what they get is news owned by billionaires and hosted by millionaires. Because of this, the likelihood of seeing positive news coverage of a social democrat decreases, and the likelihood of seeing negative news coverage of a social democrat increases. Conservative media demonizes anything to its left, and liberal media demonizes anything to its left, even something only a little to its left like social democracy.

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The most recent and obvious example of this would be news coverage of the 2020 Bernie Sanders campaign. [“Bernie Sanders makes my skin crawl.”] [“Executions in Central Park.”] When the Sanders campaign was on the upswing in spite of this coverage, the Democratic establishment rallied its forces and internally pleaded with other candidates to drop out and endorse Joe Biden. The idea that everyone decided independently, on the same day, to drop out and endorse Biden is naive. This was a coordinated effort to get behind Biden and to stop Sanders from securing the nomination. A similar coordinated effort by the Democratic establishment is being waged against Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They do not represent business interests and imperial interests in the way that top Democrats want them to, and for that, their positions are diminished in the media by top Democrats. [“Like five people.”] Such an effort to limit AOC's influence can be seen in the recent successful effort by the Democratic establishment to deny her a seat on the House Committee of Energy and Commerce. This was said to be hers until Democrats pulled a last-minute ambush that kept her away from anything that might further movement on the Green New Deal. Democratic politicians are not monsters, but enough of them have convinced themselves that since the Republican Party is basically as cartoonishly evil as The Simpsons claimed they were, then they, as Democrats, must be their angelic opposites.

“If the Republicans are the bad guys,” they might reason, “then we must be the good guys,” as if anything to the left of Mr. Burns must be a righteous freedom fighter. Now, you might be thinking “Well, what can we do about it?” It's good to want prescription and not only description, but the question presumes the prescriber and the listener have the same goal. If our goal is only social democracy, then supporting soc-dems in elections and especially primary elections against garden variety liberals may be the best way to slowly change the ideological makeup of the Democratic Party. As challenging as that is to imagine, bear in mind that the Democratic Party has already gone through an ideological overhaul throughout the course of the past century, and it's not impossible for it to happen again with enough time, effort, and the right people. Basically, if our goal is to make the Democratic Party of the United States of America more like the New Democratic Party of Canada, then that is a difficult but theoretically achievable goal. It's something worth doing, if only for harm reduction. In the short-term, we all want medicare-for-all and other policies that will provide relief. If, however, our ultimate goal is a classless, stateless society, the Democratic Party or any political party will not be the entity that gives that to us. There is too much money in political parties to effectively escape capitalism exclusively through electoralism.

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A hypothetical anti-capitalist, anti-statist political party in the United States cannot compete within a system it hopes to completely dismantle. See, elections are won through money, and capitalists are not going to endorse and donate to their own loss of power. The game is too well rigged. Knowing this, much of our energies could be better utilized through direct action, the specifics of which will be covered in a series of future videos. Goals like liberating private property simply are not the goals of the Democratic Party or even the social democracy that is desired by reformers. To summarize, the Democratic Party's ideology is liberalism, liberalism is centrist, liberalism is not socialism, liberalism is not radical, and liberalism is not the left. The left is socialism, which includes a path towards communism, and communism is a classless, stateless society. If we want something besides capitalism, then there is no prescription for the Democratic Party. There is only prescription for what we can do in addition to electoral politics. The right tools are needed for the right job. The Democratic Party is not the radical left. But we can be.